Disposable Society

To see how we produced all the promo material check out my design practise blog. The campaign definitely worked though, the night was a resounding success. Heres some snaps from the night to look through.

Made In Leeds TV interview

That's right, Goat collective is gonna be on TV. Airs tonight at 6:30 on freeview channel 8. We spoke about Disposable Society, the NURAG launch party and just Goat Collective in general. 

Louise Fletcher cards

Me and Maurice produced these letterpress business cards for Louise Fletcher (the writer behind the Independent Leeds Disposable Society Press release - read here)

Although she decided that she wanted a more extravagant design for her cards and wrote us a new brief (project should be up on Design Practise blog soon) I wanted to get this up somewhere... 

Do you ever feel like theres something mi

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.”  

Banksy has it so right. Putting art out there for anyone and everyone is a good feeling and so easy to do. Colleges photocopier and some wallpaper paste from Wilko's made this happen. This piece is pretty conceptual. The poster initially read 'Do you ever feel like there's something missing?' When i first put them up I ripped off a small section off the poster, this is what was missing. I like the idea of people who get the concept ripping off more and more until theres barely anything left. I also like the idea of people who don't get it ripping the posters and inadvertently adding to the concept.

Research: Royal Studio

We are beginning to evaluate our branding for Goat Collective. We already have some of the design constraints laid out and the logo designed but we want to look at how we can push this brand further and where we can apply it. As we are already working as Goat Collective we have the advantage of knowing which branded elements are necessary and valuable to our practice. One thing that is high up on the to do list is a redesign of the website. Above is a screenshot from Royal Studios website which has recently been designed. The image focused layout and the simple functionality is something I would like to replicate within the Goat website design.  

Good , yes, we are royal. The Royal Studio is a design vortex. It has deep and strategical approach to the design wonders. The Royal is anxious and it stares with cruel addictiveness. It is serious and wise. Methodic. Scientific. Moves fast and creates value. The Royal has fun, knows not how to be funny and plays OCD like a monkey on metabolic steroids with a passion for reason. Loyal to culture. Royal to business.

Tone of voice is something that isn't consistent across all of our branding material. This is important to make sure that we convey our personality through copy. Above is the Royal Studio's manifesto, I love the succint punchy structure. The use of emotive language and similes makes it a much more interesting read than Goat Collective's manifesto. This is something we will be tackling within the personal branding section of the OUGD602 module.

Quality Formations Essay

Sharon Heleine, one of the colleges marketing managers made us aware of a grant provided by quality formations of £1000 for start up businesses. To enter they required a 1000 word essay explaining your business venture and how you would use the money if you were to win the grant. Below is the essay, written by me and edited by other members of the team at Goat Collective.

Help Feed the Goat

Goat Collective consists of eight students studying a range of creative degrees. We are good friends and work well together. As stated in the manifesto we all share a passion for social change, equality and environmentalism and intend to use Goat Collective as a platform to output work raising awareness about these issues. However we understand that this cannot be all we do, we require funds to enable us to work on these passion projects and the best way to do this is to offer our services to the commercial sector. In this overcrowded industry it is essential that we have a unique selling point. Leeds is home to a number of very talented designers, photographers, videographers and commercial artists. However the majority of these practitioners work solely in their own fields and are unable to offer a variety of creative services. This is what makes Goat Collective different. A client can approach us with almost any brief and we will be able to complete it to a professional standard. This makes us particularly attractive to start up companies; a client's vision only needs to be communicated once and as we all work closely together, the aesthetic we produce will be consistent across each visual element of these start ups' identities. We are based in Leeds and the number of start ups and independent companies is on the rise, we feel we have placed ourselves in an optimum position to obtain commissions from these companies and are excited about the way Leeds is developing. 

Hyde Park Book Club is one such Independent company, a cafe/event space prizing good coffee, music and artwork. We have managed to secure an ongoing artist residency at Hyde Park Book Club, each month we update the artwork hung in the space. 

Goat Collective was launched in September this year and to celebrate we produced poster packs for the first years at LCA. Unlike the majority of free material distributed during the freshers week, we weren't offering any advice or trying to sell anything. The poster pack contained free artwork and nothing but. We've all experienced student halls and know how bare the walls can feel, so what better to receive in your first week than a pack of straight up artwork. Each poster pack contained a selection of prints. This was our way of getting the Goat name out there and re-investing in an institution that has helped get us where we are today. 

We are currently being kept busy as we are in the process of curating an exhibition called 'Disposable Society.' This focuses on implications of the throw away society we live in and offers us and other artists (we have put out an open call for submissions) the chance to portray their own viewpoints on this topic through whichever medium they see fit. The event will run from the 5th to the 13th of March at the incredible space at Northern Monk Brewery. We have contacts at Independent Leeds magazine who plan to feature Goat Collective in their next issue and advertise the Disposable Society exhibition. This will provide invaluable exposure. We are really excited about the event, however it has made us realise the importance of funding if we are to progress as a business. For example the event space itself costs £450 and there are a number of additional costs such as transport and promotion. We have been receiving a steady flow of commercial work but this is primarily coming from bands and small events and the fees we have been able to charge are not high enough to pay ourselves for our time and also reinvest into the company. We have each put £50-£100 back into Goat Collective but are looking for other means to gather funding. None of us are particularly financially secure so we will not be able to continue to to fund projects with student loans and part-time jobs.

With more funding we feel we would be able to promote ourselves both through digital means and with printed material. This would allow us to reach a number of businesses that have not yet heard of us and hopefully secure some commercial clients that will offer repeat business.

We are currently working out of studio spaces offered at Leeds College of Art but as the majority of us are graduating this year we're beginning to look at studio space for rent. We have spoken to contacts at East Street Arts and they are able to offer temporary space at hugely discounted rates, funding from Quality Formations will help to pay rent for the first couple of months and provide us with some financial security that we desperately need if we are to move forward with the collective. It is vital we obtain some studio space of our own; we need somewhere that we can all work from together and also plan to use this space to run exhibitions, live art events and art workshops for the public.

Goat has also been offered the use of £10,000 worth of darkroom equipment and need a space to house this. Not only will this be useful for the photographers within our collective but we also plan to have this open to the public. Leeds does not currently have any public darkrooms for independent photographers to use and we feel that if advertised correctly, this could be a valuable asset to our business. We have not yet worked out the exact costing but photographers will pay a fee to use the equipment and materials as well as a yearly membership fee.

Further down the line we want to purchase some simple screen printing equipment and possibly a risograph printer, this would be significantly cheaper than using external printers so we will be able to offer our clients competitive rates.

We have big plans for Goat Collective and feel that it is a very viable business model. Funding from Quality Formations will help us to achieve our goals. Help feed the Goat.

Disposable Society OPEN CALL Promotions

By chance I walked past as a worker was taking what he said was eight years of posters off one of the boards in Hyde Park. I salvaged as much as I could carry as I felt the aesthetic of the ripped, weathered aesthetic and also the idea of more and more layers of paper being put up over one another fits with the Disposable Society them. I intend to use some of them for my actual piece for the exhibition but as I collected so much me and Ellie produced posters from them. We printed the informations in a bold typeface, black on white, and cut strips out so the information stood out against the existing type and colour. 

I photographed one of the posters with the most varied colour and made this into a gif that changes Hue to use on social media. This will just make the design a little more eycatching amidst the sea of imagery on Facebook, Twitter and the like. 

We decided to push the submission date back to the 20th as we realised that many of our friends who were meant to be submitting would not have the time to produce their pieces in the small amount of time between the dissertation deadline and the 7th of Feb. I made this amendment to the gif and again tweeted this. 

Me and Rees also built an A-board to display the Poster and have taken this to a few different events to try and drum up interest. 

Aswell as all this I spent two and a half hours emailing numerous studios, colleges and university art departments, SU's and individual artists. I sent them all a similar message but customised each one a little to make the emails more personable.

We have also all been tweeting the link, sharing the open call for submissions post regularly on Facebook and the link to the downloadable brief is displayed in the instagram bio. We plan to do more to actually advertise the event closer to the launch night.

Me and Rees wrote a very simple open brief to try and explain succinctly what the exhibition is and to provide the information necessary for participants.

Alongside all this we have all been constantly updating the twitter instagram and facebook pages.